


I Miss You Already

by CrazyAsACupcake



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, F/M, Fred Weasley Dies, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, Loss, POV Second Person, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Romance, fem!reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrazyAsACupcake/pseuds/CrazyAsACupcake
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, the remaining Weasleys return to the Burrow to mourn.
Relationships: Fred Weasley/Reader
Kudos: 8





	I Miss You Already

You don't know what time you arrived back at the Burrow. The past few hours all blend together into a blur of movement and time passing: the feast, the celebration, the victory, the battle.

Finding Fred's body among the dead in the Great Hall.

You don't think you've blinked since then. You don't think you've breathed, either – not properly at least.

It didn't seem real. It _doesn't_ seem real.

He was laying there with his eyes closed, his skin smooth yet slightly marred by the dirt and dust of the rubble around him. He looked like he did every night when he fell asleep first – when you'd prop yourself up on your elbow to watch his peaceful face, finally without his usual impish grin. You expected his nose to twitch, like it normally did sometimes when he was having a really good dream, but it didn't. One corner of his lip was lifted in a half smirk, and you thought that if you stared long enough then maybe he would quip something about you being unable to take your eyes off of him. You took his hand – the one resting on top of his stomach – and you were taken aback by how cold he was. He was normally warm: always too hot for a pyjama shirt in bed, curling his body around yours on a night when the chilly wind found its way into his room; or clasping your gloved hands between his bare ones and blowing air them in the middle of Diagon Alley when he saw them shaking, before placing his hands against your bright red cheeks in order to heat them up just the tiniest bit.

He's not meant to be the cold one.

You traced his knuckles with the pad of your thumb, trying to get yourself to calm down. You could feel your breath getting caught in one spot every time, just below your throat, stopping dead in your chest just before you could get it out. You brushed away a drop of water from the back of his hand before you realised it was a tear that had fallen from your cheek.

It's funny, when you think about it. In the movies and books you'd read as a child or a teenager, whenever someone saw the dead body of the person they loved, they would scream. They would bawl their eyes out and cling to their lifeless corpse and refuse to let go. But that's not what happened. It was if you were watching it happen to someone else, as if it was just another life lost in the battle, not your boyfriend – the love of your life – laying in front of you. You think it's better, that way. The way with the silent tears and the comforting memories as you hold his hand for the last time. Because you know that if you had started screaming then you wouldn't have stopped, and your last memory of him would be you clawing at his jumper as Arthur and Molly dragged you away from him.

You hope, at least, that this is the better way.

You don't know how Molly can smile. You don't know how she can hug Harry and kiss Ginny and pull the remaining twin towards her with the smile that she normally gave _him_. Her son is dead. You wonder if it's because it wasn't Percy, who came back, or Bill, the perfect eldest son, or Ron, Harry Potter's best friend, or Ginny, the first Weasley girl in generations. You wonder if it's because there's an automatic replacement for him; he used to joke and say she was going to return the one she liked the least. You wonder if maybe there was some truth to the joke after all.

You sit at the dining table in the Burrow, staring at that clock. That damn clock. Fred's hand quivers as it points to the word _LOST_. You want to go over to it and rip it off with your bare hands, pry the hand off the clock face with bleeding fingertips so that you can drop it into your pocket and keep it with you forever. You want to, but you don't. Your legs feel numb, like they aren't even there, and you know that if you stand up you'll just collapse onto the floor in a heap, though you don't see why that's a bad thing.

You remember the last words he said to you before he disappeared into the battle, giving you a final, searing kiss for luck.

" _I miss you already, munch_."

 _LOST_.

You look away from the clock. Away from the quivering hand. You look at the table, the wood scratched and damaged and worn and _loved_. You trace your fingers over some of the words that have been carved into it over the years.

George sits across from you, his back to the clock. His face is pale, his eyes dark and sunken, and he stares at one spot on the table, not blinking. His fingers tap against the wood, one after the other and then back again. You find yourself becoming angry, the red flames licking their way from your stomach to your heart, where they coil around it and infect it, causing it to turn black and shrivel up.

 _Why wasn't it you_? You think to yourself, your teeth clenching with every tap. _You had nothing to lose_. _He had everything_. _He had me_.

_Why wasn't it you?_

Molly places a cup of tea in front of you, and for the first time you look at her face. You see that it doesn't reach her eyes fully, that her smile looks more like a grimace now that she's spent so long holding it. You realise that you might have been too hard on her; she is the heart and hearth of the Weasley clan. She is who keeps them going. She cannot break down in front of them, because then they will all collapse around her. She needs to be strong for them.

The mug is chipped, the handle is crooked, and scrawled across the side facing you, in bright purple paint, is the word _FRED_. You know that if you turned it around you'd find your name on the back with a heart, but you don't. Instead you stare at the wonky capital letters, your vision blurring as you focus on the space between the _F_ and the _R_. You don't want to drink the tea inside it because you know, when the drink is gone, you'll have to stare at the wonkier letters along the bottom – the secret _I love you_ he'd hidden until you'd had the first drink out of it. You remember when you cried tears of joy and laughter at it; trust him to come up with such an elaborate way to say it for the first time.

You want to cry now, staring at that damn mug.

Instead, you push away from the table, turning quickly on your heel and leaving the room as fast as you could. You feel sick. You hear Molly tut behind you, though there's not really any heart in it, and you want to turn around and scream.

"Don't you realise there's someone missing? Don't you realise you came home with six children, not seven? Don't you realise he's _gone_?"

But you don't, because that's not fair. It's not fair because you _know_ that she is only holding it together for the rest of them.

You stand in the hall and lean your forehead against one of the crooked walls, telling yourself not to throw up on Molly's rug. You think of the last time you were here, and all the time in between when you had all worried the Burrow was destroyed. You remember Fred grabbing you by the hand as you ran from his room, remember the urgency in his eyes as he squeezed your hand tightly and apparated you away to Shell Cottage.

You hear a noise above you, and you look up to see Ginny, sat with her legs through the bannister slats, crying to herself. There's a hole in her shirt, just below her clavicle, and you go to tell her to give it to her brother so he can sew it for her, before you remember he's not there to sew her shirts anymore. His secret talent, something you'd taken for granted all of the times he'd repaired your dresses and jumpers, is probably something you hadn't thought you'd miss that much. You look down at your clothes ruined by the battle and think about how he would've lovingly repaired them, making them look better than new.

You climb the stairs, passing behind her as she screams into her hands, her beautiful red hair knotted and wild. You want to say something – anything – to let her know it'll be okay, but you can't think of anything that could possibly prove that.

You leave her sat alone at the top of the stairs.

The air in his room tastes stale, as though it knows he won't be coming back – or maybe that's just what it's like when you leave a room alone for two months. You look at his green duvet cover, still crumpled where it had been left the day everyone fled to Shell Cottage. You pick it up, wrapping it around yourself and climbing onto the bed, curling on your side. It's strange, to be laying on this bed without him behind you, his arms wrapped around you, his face buried into the crook of your neck. It feels bare, missing something that it will never be able to get back.

You look over to his chest of drawers and see a picture of the two of you outside Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. In the photo, he's lifting you up, his arms around your waist, while you laugh and hit his shoulders playfully. As you watch, picture Fred puts picture you down before pulling you in for a hug, kissing you on the top of your head.

You turn away from the picture, tears welling in your eyes as it hits you all at once.

As you start screaming, yelling until your throat burns and then yelling some more, there's only one thing going through your mind.

_Please come back. I miss you already…_


End file.
